The Traveller
by SAINTIXE56
Summary: Set after season 4. Where our trio learns that: all things considered they are more human than they knew and danger can be coming from unexpected directions. How does it feel when hunters are hunted. BH universe belongs to Toby Whithouse. Reviews welcomed.
1. Chapter 1

Being human and its characters belong to Toby Whithouse and the BBC. This storyline was inspired by a discussion on the blog about previous programs dealing with the supernatural world.

Night. Most town people pretend they like the night because they think they pretend they can get it tamed by lights and sounds. Night in the country is less civilized, darker and thus more honest.

Night is not for the faint hearted. Night is the right place for the scary creatures to come out, to prowl and seize.

Night is just a dark hemisphere while the other side benefits for the glaring sun. Night is just the absence of stellar lights. Most of the universe lives in darkness. Night is not absence of life.

The human looked for a last time at the semi-detached house at the corner of the street. The revived engine softly roared and the middle-range black car drove off as two men walked to the house. Winter nights. Though it was still 5pm. Workers coming home. Bread earners. Having toiled through blood, sweat and tears.

The driver smiled as she could see that only one man was showing in her rear view mirror. A young woman unseen by the pedestrians who walked up the steep road welcomed them. Again she was not showing in the mirror. Yet the three would be humans were behaving oh-so normally. Tomorrow would be pay day therefore bills-settling day. The pleasures of being human…

The car turned left at the end of the street. Anonymous.

Tom raised his head and sniffed hard.

"What is it this time, Tom? "

Before each lunar cycle, the young wolf's sense of smell was keener. Last month, convinced he had discovered some danger ahead, his heightened power had led in to the carcass of a dead cat much to Hal's disgust. Tomorrow evening, Tom would lock himself in the cellar. Tonight, his smell was telling him something was amiss.

"It is gone. Now, it is gone. Not human, not human at all. Weird…"

"Supernatural."

Alex looked interested. The young ghost was fascinated by her new world. Her super-natural world.

"I really don't know. It smelled… eerie. Not human, yet… not supernatural. Un-human?"

The vampire sighed. Tom and Alex might be a powerful werewolf and a teleporting disembodied spirit. They were also two very green inexperienced super naturals. They needed his help just like he needed theirs to prevent him turning Wales into a cemetery.

"There is a re-run of Time Team in 20 minutes. We better not dally outside; it is getting cold"

The trio entered inside the house.

By now, the car which they had passed had reached the outskirts of Cardiff.

It was really a simple black car. A car for which all street lights would turn or remain green till it reached its destination. An abandoned airbase.


	2. Chapter 2: the collector

What to do. Originally, it was oh-so-simple. Sampling. Collect data. Register, record. Notes. Then she had met them. They did seem normal, human. They were not. Better they lived with a third creature. New specie, so deliciously decadent… unless it was archaic.

The possibilities were either some mutation to a prehistorically unheard of missing link. Unless it was a genetic atypia? Once in the research lab with her sisters, she would know. Once… For the moment, she was stuck in Barry, Wales, United Kingdom, European Union, Earth… etc.

Collection. She needed to collect the three types. Who knows, maybe there were more types. After all, why only three human sub-types… sharks had more.

How to get them willy nilly to enter the cages of her growing, ever growing collection of artefacts. The invisible invisible woman had only been detected through her 'special' goggles, the visible yet invisible man looked like any ordinary twenty something and the young one certainly did not look feral.

Yet, she had to investigate. Maybe this was the consequence of some secret agency's dabbling in science. The perfect soldier, the ideal killing machine.

All had started when she was looking for a signal. Going to the beach made sense, plenty of open space without the limitation of concrete, electric static and all interfering radioactive waves. She felt thirst and looked for a quiet café. Café around the corner.

She was getting inside the shop when the detector got ballistic. Quickly she left before risking detection. Inside, she heard a voice complaining of screeching noises while the second, a lot more educated interestingly was replying he had heard nothing.

After that, it was easy. See who gets out, follow unnoticed. Take covert pictures. Analyse. The next day, type Alpha felt sure somebody has visited 'his' café during the night. Type Beta looked all over but found nothing and dismissed type alpha as being near his moment of the month.

Type Beta had seemed human except for his invisibility to mirrors and cameras but his blood group was highly atypical, totally un-human. Type Alpha had lupus lupus hair but his blood group was human.

The night visit would have to be repeated; she needed more samples. A bit of blood from a scratch on a door frame, some skin shed when the café employees had cut their fingers while slicing cheese.

Once in a cage, she would be able to collect so much more information. She had to. The day was nearing when the Mother would be coming. The Mother would use every bit of data she had patiently collected for the past fifty years. Here and there. The samples had all been analysed, dissected. Incinerated.

The airbase was perfect. The trespassers never trespassed again. If and when, polite policemen came, they left with the knowledge 'nothing wrong had ever happen here'. They also left with a blinding unexplained headache… Well, one had to take some protective measures and said measures came with a cost. ..


	3. Chapter 3: the airbase

Night shifts had a clear disadvantage. They did put the collector at risk of meeting 'samples' at too close a range. Not that the collector was not ready.

Lately during a full moon, she has met a furry humanoid creature. Who went berserk on meeting her? Then realizing who he was facing, his angry growl had turned into a pitiful whelp. The samples taken turned out to be lupus lupus again. To paraphrase William Shakespeare and his poor Yorrick, the life span of the sample had been cut short. No human was allowed to live once understanding who the collector was. The Mother was coming. The Mother would not stand human nonsense standing on the way. The Mother would be hungry. The collector was to make sure the heavily pregnant female would be fed.

At Honolulu Heights, life went on. The full moon was over and Tom was heavily sleeping. Hal was working double shift with Alex. Inside the small kitchen, the young Scot was busy slicing food, preparing orders behind a make shift curtain. The patrons would have been surprised to see hamburgers floating into thin air.

"An espresso and a slice of fruit cake. Two pounds ninety five pence. Thank you"

The customer carried her cup and plate to a free table. The visible invisible creature looked incredibly humane. Yet the collector knew better. After all, she was looking also oh-so human. After sitting, she bit into a morsel of the cake and swallowed some of the blackened water. Back at the base, she would later regurgitate all that rubbish. Meanwhile, covertly, she looked at an apparently ordinary small cell phone. From where she was, nobody could read its screen.

Interestingly, it confirmed active radio waves emitting from the kitchen; another quick reading and she knew the twice invisible human was there too. In the kitchen. Where was the other young man?

Much later that night after entering the data collected on that day back at the abandoned airbase, she was ready to enter the tank when alarms rang.

They did not ring; they flashed all sorts of colours including some unknown to humanity. Trespassers were coming. Trespassers? The hidden receptors showed two shadows. Two more visible invisible humans. New specie or specie not yet diagnosed as such by humans. After dealing with the intruders, she would inform the Mother of this unsuspected development.

The two young vampires were on the lookout for a new place where to play with the dogs. The abandoned site was ideal. Cages would be filled and howlings would not be heard. All they had to do was to make sure the derelict aircraft hangar would accommodate enough vampires to become the new coliseum for Britain. Money would flow; they would be rich! Beyond dreams.

They did not look beyond the fact there was a human woman walking toward them well past midnight on the site of the abandoned base. They did not find strange she would walk to them with an elusive smile. She was human, she had a heartbeat and this heart was pumping gorgeous blood.

She did not run away when they ran to her. Vaguely in the back of their minds, one ruled her as a well-dressed vagrant; the other listed her as suicidal. Whatever.

Both sets of fangs dug in her neck. Both sets of lips swallowed. Both throats choked and tried to spit out the vibrating pink jelly they had extracted from their intended victim.

Was she a dog? But they were not turning into smoke. They could feel the jelly progressing of its own accord down their windpipe and slowly piercing from inside their black hearts. So the vampires died slowly, albeit more, much more painfully.

"How interesting"


	4. Chapter 4

"Go! Go and tell me I'm wrong. Go and … I do not know. Smell her? Touch her?"

"You want me to sniff the air near one of our customers? Are you implying her hygiene is defective?"

"No. Hal. Not that. Just… just she does not seem to …feel 'right'. Please, Hal. Please"

Never ever before, Tom, the feral Dog he had befriended had looked so anxious. The vampire gave in. After making sure the wooden stake was unnoticeable, hidden behind his plastic apron. Harry Yorke proceeded to carry the cheese toast to an un-assuming patron.

He sniffed the air, heard her pulse and accidentally touched her hand as he fumbled to set the knife and fork. Nothing. The woman looked older than them. Aside this detail, she was human, sounded, smelled and beat human. Tom needed a holiday.

A fine hair. Inadvertently left on the paper napkin was collected. The seemingly un-extraordinary mobile started his mission. From the kitchen, all the two super naturals could see was their customer's back. Hear the usual noises one expected with drinking from a cup and cutting food.

The screen was providing wonderful data. Hair: lupus lupus. Yet the visible invisible man was not lupus lupus. The faint dead skin cells he had left on her skin would be further analysed at the base.

In truth, only one question remained un-answered. Should she 'sample' them now? Or wait and sample the female with the two males. Mother expected results. Mother wanted an uneventful coming. Her sisters deserved the best. She had to decide Soon. In her world, mistakes were not allowed. Blessed was Mother.

Tom sighed. Despite Hal's reassurance, he knew deep in his bones the patron was different. Only after her leaving, did he feel able to breathe freely. It was like a heavy weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He had fought vampires. He knew the smell of war, hate. He knew what it felt to be set upon by the blood suckers, down to be locked in a cage for dog fights. Vampires had hunted his kin; he knew what it felt to be the prey.

This time, he felt bereft of words. Vampires hated werewolves; the feeling was mutual. This time, he was not a prey. But a target, an object. A … subtext. Sorry, a subject. Allison would have approved of this word .A subject. A thing. A subject… for what?

The two men closed the shop, walked home. Directly. Stopping only at Hal's request. Alex wanted some upholstery cleaner, tea pyramids, chicken breasts and bacon. Tom fidgeted while Hal carefully aligned the coins to pay the local grocer around the corner.

Generally, it was the vampire recently detoxed who was nervous when a human heart was pulsing around lovingly red blood. Tonight, it was the wolf.

Tom needed a break. The sooner, the better.

"Just a few days. A long week-end. The boss owes us a break"

"Something is wrong. Mate. This woman gave me the creeps. No kidding"

They had reached their street; climbing the steep hill where her house stood, passed by a car. Tom shivered, turned his head to try and look at who the driver was. The car carried on, quietly, unhurried. And turned left.

"Alex, we are home"

"Alex, after 500 years as a supernatural, I assure you the novelty of hide and seek the ghost wore off way before living with Pearl and Leo."

They searched all over, the ghost was gone. Teleported where? Rentaghosting what and who? The two men were feeling let down by Alex when Tom nudged Hal.

On the bar, a white envelop was waiting. Standing up held by dominoes.

What does one do to an envelope crying out loud to be opened? One opens it. It read:

If the Sub-human species type lupus lupus and type visible invisible want to know where their friend type invisible invisible is, they can Google the following address. Now.

Inside a cage, Alex was still reeling from the shock of not only seeing a stranger getting in her house but being properly knocked down by a human. Annie had taught her how to channel radio-waves. Annie had not added her that radio-waves could knock out cold ghosts. She glared at her captor.

A deceptively common place human.

A human who was swallowing a pink vibrating jelly with sickening relish.


End file.
